Round and Round Up and Down
by peroxidepest17
Summary: Sam gets the carousel. Dean gets the roller coaster. This is the story of their lives in a microcosm.


**Title:** Round and Round (Up and Down)  
**Universe: ** SPN  
**Theme/Topic: **Dean is afraid of roller coasters  
**Rating:/B** PG-13  
**Character/Pairing/s: ** Dean. Sam.  
**Spoilers/Warnings:** Just straight crack.  
**Word Count:** 1,775  
**Summary:** Sam gets the carousel. Dean gets the roller coaster. This is the story of their lives in a microcosm.  
**Dedication:** For sophiap, who prompted me on my commentfic battle with: "A case in a haunted amusement park reveals that Dean's fear of flying is _nothing_ compared to his fear of roller coasters.  
**A/N:** Nothing interesting happens in this. BUT it could have been so much longer. So at least it is short, I guess.  
**Disclaimer:** No harm or infringement intended.

* * *

Of course Sam's the one who gets the haunted carousel. The horses go in _circles_ (oh the humanity) and at one point, Dean is pretty sure the whole thing starts to move at a _wild_15mph rotation while Sam is darting around with his flashlight in hand, looking panicked and tense like the carousel is some sort of terrifying monster and he could die from all the pink pretty horses and gilt mirrors or something.

It's like that poltergeist that nearly killed Sam with a freaking lamp cord all over again.

And by that, Dean means pathetic. Some things, even when they're _haunted_ don't count as scary.

So yeah. Sam's dealing with that right now, like a champ.

What does Dean get to do in the meantime?

Nothing nearly as cute as a carousel, obviously. Nothing even as rife with innocent horror movie potential as a house of mirrors or the kiddie train that loops around about 500 feet of track over and over again.

Nope. Dean gets trapped on the out and out most _terrifying _ride in the entire amusement park. Just because he's Dean, or something.

That is to say, Dean gets trapped on the roller coaster.

This happens when the shoulder guard abruptly slams down over his head as he examines what he thinks is a bloody message scrawled on the front of the roller coaster car he's crouching in, effectively locking him into the seat that he's only really half in as is.

Then the lights blare to life and the cars start to move forward.

And Dean can't move.

The worst part of it all might be the fact that what he'd thought was a bloody message left behind by Amanda Erris's ghost actually ends up being red-pen graffiti reading, "_Joan luvz Greg_," which he hadn't been able to make out in the dark.

* * *

Sam has heard many horrible, dying-animal type cries erupting from the throats of frightened and injured people in his lifetime as hunter, but the litany of profanity tinged with terror he hears his brother start to make from the roller coaster while he is trapped on the erratically rotating carousel of death are some of the most impressive ones he has ever been privy to.

Half of him is tempted to abandon his current task of locating Amanda Erris's baby teeth and stumble off of the carousel to help his brother with whatever horrors he is facing on the other ride.

The other half of him realizes that he can't, not really, because as ridiculous as it may seem, he can't get _off _the carousel. Every time he gains his bearings enough and tries to head to the end, or to the center, the ride either abruptly changes speed or direction or both, and he's practically thrown against a peacefully bobbing unicorn or against a giant brown bear wearing a gold-edged saddle or some other animal that has no business being saddled and ridden for the enjoyment of humans.

He is pretty sure if they survive this hunt that Dean will give him as much shit for being defeated by a little girl's favorite ride as Dean did when he'd nearly been taken out by that haunted reading lamp the last time they'd worked with Missouri. Maybe more, since this one involves ponies, some of which are pink.

Sam grits his teeth when he hears the sinister clank of the roller coaster in the distance, as the train slowly makes its way up the incline towards the first drop, Dean shouting and cursing (mostly screaming in terror) the entire time.

Sam huffs a determined breath and reaches for a bobbing Griffon, gripping a wing tight in his hand as he continues to head for the center of the carousel, in the hopes of finding the compartment that Amanda Erris's mother had hidden her murdered daughter's baby teeth in five years ago.

Under his feet, the carousel shifts again, gaining speed with a musical whir before stopping abruptly and jerking him in the opposite direction. Sam bites his lip as his shoulder slams hard into the ass of a ridiculous looking high-stepping lion while his knee impacts with the foot of the plumed ostrich immediately behind it.

He curses, grabs the pole the Lion is bobbing on, and finally just swings himself into the saddle for a moment of reprieve and observation, since Dean obviously is too preoccupied to see him do it.

What he knows thus far is that Mrs. Erris had tearfully confessed to hiding the pouch of her daughter's baby teeth behind one of the jeweled mirrors at the very center of the carousel, beside Amanda's favorite horse.

Of course, there are several different types of horses available; a pink-haired unicorn, a black Pegasus, a white Pegasus, a freaking _zebra_ and a regular bay stallion stretched out at full gallop.

He frowns and tries to imagine which of the general, equine-shaped population of the carousel a seven year old girl would hold in higher regard than any other. Probably the unicorn with the pink hair? Or the white Pegasus? Those are princess-y type things, aren't they?

Mind made up that it's the unicorn, Sam prepares to dismount the lion and continue his difficult trek towards it, only stopping himself when he abruptly remembers one of the ratty stuffed animals they'd seen in Amanda's room when Mrs. Erris had tearfully given them the tour of her home and the quiet little girl's room inside of it that hadn't been touched or altered or lived in for the five years since Amanda's kidnapping and murder at the hands of one of the amusement park employees.

He thinks he remembers seeing a plain brown horse sitting in the corner of a pile of stuffed animals, in between a small white dog and a adorably fat plush pig. The horse had seemed well worn, stained and matted in the way much-loved objects get in one's childhood.

"Right," he says, and nearly hits himself for being so stupid.

He changes course abruptly and stumbles determinedly towards the brown stallion.

Dean struggles futilely against the shoulder guard as it pins him down at an uncomfortable angle because he's actually stretched out across both of the car's seats, his foot hanging out over the edge of the car in exactly the manner all the prerecorded safety warnings tell you _not_ to do.

There is some manly cursing at the ghost as he moves, and then some slightly less manly hyperventilating, and then, as he feels the front of the cart go over the edge of the first drop, suspending him like that for just a second, he also hears something that sounds a lot like a _squeak _come out of his throat.

Two seconds are given for him to contemplate his doom, and without any more warning, the cart is suddenly plunging forward and downward at speeds not meant for humans to endure without a windshield.

At that point in this story, all coherent thought leaves him in lieu of screaming like a civilian being chased by a professional slasher in one of those ridiculous Hollywood horror flicks.

Dean realizes, amidst feeling of what he is pretty sure means his heart is exploding, that he's not really afraid of flying at all.

He's actually just afraid of the part where you go splat afterwards.

* * *

Three of the longest minutes of Dean's life later, the roller coaster cars finally pull back into the boarding station, nice and slow and even, which is good, because he is pretty sure all the bile in his throat is going to come shooting out of him any minute. The moment the shoulder guard releases him, he is fucking out of here, and he doesn't _care_ if it's the ghost of a murdered seven year old girl they're dealing with, he's going to gank her with great enthusiasm right _now_. Or, you know, once he manages to unhinge his white-knuckled death grip from the hand rail at the front of the car.

Meanwhile, Sam is standing at the entrance, leaning against the railing with an amused look on his face as he goes to meet Dean once the cars come to a complete stop.

Dean lets out a sigh of relief when the motion ceases. Finally.

"Sammy, I don't know what she did to that freaking roller coaster, man," he groans as the shoulder guard finally releases with a puff of air, the sound barely audible around the ones of his heart pounding in his ears and stomach roiling rebelliously, "but I'm pretty sure that ride would have killed a lesser man. She has to be stopped."

Sam pats him soothingly a few times, before saying, brightly, "I ganked her before you went over the first drop, Dean."

Dean looks up at him incredulously. "That was a _regular_ roller coaster?" he says, and doesn't believe it as he slowly climbs out of the car, legs wobbling like a newborn fawn's. What the eff is wrong with people these days.

Sam grins back and nods, because this is obviously what the little twerp has been waiting for ever since the incident with the goddamned lamp. Dean Winchester, crippled by a children's ride at an amusement park.

Sam looks like he's just about to say so too, as he magnanimously helps Dean out of the roller coaster. Dean is about to remind his gigantor brother that _he'd_ taken a good fifteen minutes to beat a _carousel_, except that when he opens his mouth to do so, he ends up vomiting all over Sam's shoes instead.

Just, right on them. Everywhere. He'd had steak and mashed potatoes for dinner. With two pieces of pie for dessert. Dean is pretty sure it's all right in front of them again, except this time, on Sam's shoes instead of a plate. And decidedly less pleasant smelling the second time around.

Sam makes a face like he hates everything as he looks down at his stinky shoes.

Dean finishes retching a few seconds later.

At which time the brothers just take a moment to look at each other, Sam staring, and Dean wiping at the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.

Wordlessly, they both eventually come to the conclusion that tonight has just been one of those cases where no one here comes out a winner. No one.

So they fall into a resigned truce instead, and end up having to hightail it for the park's back fence before security can find (and arrest) them.

Dean makes Sam throw his vomit covered shoes away before he lets him into the Impala.

**END**


End file.
